36 



SCIENCE. 



LITERARY INTELLIGENCE. 



We have received The Microscopisfs Annual for 1879, 

 published quite recently and dated 1880. It contains use- 

 ful tables, rules, formula; and memoranda, a list of micro- 

 scopical societies, with officers, etc.; Directory of prom- 

 inent microscope makers, dealers and importers in 

 America and Europe. We trust that microscopists will 

 patronize this thoroughly practical little work, and as it 

 is issued by the Industrial Publishing Company, of Dey 

 street, New York, at the nominal price of twenty-five 

 cents, its expense can hardly be a bar to its purchase. 

 We understand future numbers will be considerably en- 

 larged. 



The announcement is made of a new bi-monthly maga- 

 zine called The Educational Review, which will be de- 

 voted to the science and philosophy of education, in all 

 its departments ol thought and discussion. It will be 

 conducted by Mr. Thomas W. Bicknell, whose great ex- 

 perience in educational literature cannot fail to make it 

 a success, and worthy of the great subject it takes in 

 hand. 



GENERAL NOTES. 



The French journal, La Lumiere Elecbique, is to receive 

 the addition of a supplement (having separate pagination) 

 in which will be given a re'su me' of recent discoveries and 

 inventions. For the present, these supplements will be 

 confined to the subject of electric lighting. 



In a new form of telephone-receiver brought before the 

 French Academy by M. Ader, two plates are used, arranged 

 in such a manner that the air can pass through a central 

 hole in one to ihe other. The result is, much louder tones, 

 the second plate acting as a sort of soundboard. 



The Corporation of Yale College have established a hor- 

 ological laborator}' in connection with the Winchester Ob- 

 servatory, with the view of encouraging the manufacture of 

 more refined apparatus for the measurement of time. 



It is reported that Mr. Swan, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, 

 has succeeded in rendering his little electric lamp a suc- 

 cess. He uses a carbon thread in a vacuum tube, which 

 supplies a soft and steady light, well adapted for household 

 purposes. 



M. Dr MONCEL has just published a third edition of his 

 work, entitled " Le Telephone, le Microphone, et le Phon- 

 ographe," the two previous editions (containing 5,500 copies 

 each) having been exhausted in fifteen months. The nu- 

 merous recent developments of the telephone and micro- 

 phone are described, and 48 new engravings are added. 

 I In: phonograph seems to have made but little progress 

 since its appearance : M. I)u Moncel, however, specifies a 

 few improvements of it. 



Tin. House of Lords' Committee hive passed the pre- 

 amble of the Hill for the construction of a subway available 

 for all kinds of traffic, vehicular and passenger, tinder the 

 Mersey, so as to conned the towns of Liverpool and Birk- 



< till' id . The total length will he 1 mile (> furlongs b]/ 2 

 chains, and the estimated capital required ,£500,000, the tak- 

 ing up of which is guaranteed by the Corporations of Liver- 

 pool and Birkenhead, the Mersey Dock Hoard, and the 



Western Railway, each ol w\ an- prepared to give 



security for one quarter the cos) of construction. The en 

 gineers arc Mr. John Fowler, of London, and Messrs. Law 

 and Thomas, of Wrexham. 



In a recent note to the Paris Academy, Professor Marangoni 

 gives the results he has arrived at in a study of the swimming- 

 bladder of fishes. He states, first, that it is the organ 

 which regulates the migration of fishes, those fishes that are 

 without it not migrating from bottoms of little depth, where 

 they find tepid water ; while fishes which have a bladder are 

 such as live in deep, cold water, and migrate to deposit 

 their ova in warmer water near the surface. Next, fishes do 

 not rise like the Cartesian diver (in the well-known experi- 

 ment), and they have to counteract the influence of their 

 swimming-bladders with their fins. If some small dead and 

 living fishes be put in a vessel three-quarters full of water 

 and the air be compressed or rarefied, one finds in the for- 

 mer case the dead fish descend, while the living ones rise, 

 head in advance, to the surface. Rarefying has the opposite 

 effect. Fishes have reason to fear the passive influences 

 due to hydrostatic pressure ; when fished from a great 

 depth, their bladders are often found to be ruptured. Thirdly, 

 the swimming-bladder produces in fishes twofold instability 

 — one of level, the other of position. A fish, having once 

 adapted its bladder to live at a certain depth, may, through 

 the slightest variation of pressure, be either forced down- 

 wards or upwards, and thus they are in unstable equilib- 

 rium as to level. As to position, the bladder being in the 

 ventral region, the centre of gravity is above the centre of 

 pressure, so that fishes are always threatened with inver- 

 sion ; and, indeed, they take the inverted position when 

 dead or dying. This double instability forces fishes to a 

 continual gymnastic movement, and doubtless helps to 

 render them strong and agile. The most agile of terrestrial 

 animals are also those which have least stability. 



A new process of extracting sugar from molasses has 

 been proposed by M. Gayon. It is based on the destruction 

 of the glucose of molasses by fermentation ; the sugar re- 

 mains unaltered, and is obtained by ulterior crystallization. 

 The ferment employed is a pretty common mould, Mucor 

 circinelloides. M. Van Tieghem found it in horsedung, and 

 was the first to describe it. The ferment cells must 

 not be confounded with those of beer-yeast, or 

 saccharomyces. They differ in form, and, unlike 

 beer-yeast, this mucor is powerless to produce glucosic and 

 alcoholic fermentations of cane-sugar, whereas it acts like 

 all alcoholic yeast on glucose and similar compounds. If, 

 then, the cells of mucor be sown in a nutritive solution of 

 cane-sugar and glucose, the latter alone ferments, the sugar 

 remaining unaltered, whereas with beer-yeast all ferments. 

 This conclusion was confirmed indirectly by experiments 

 made with a view to ascertain the constitution of the in- 

 active glucose of molasses by saccharimetric observation. 

 M. Gayon has succeeded in fermenting 200 or 300 c.c. of 

 molasses solution, and he remarks that by combining the 

 process with osmosis one might, no doubt, extract, in the 

 dry crystalline state, all the sugar which the glucose and 

 the salts retain in molasses. (The Editor of the Journal 

 i ilr Pharmacie observes that it is only exceptionally that 

 glucose exists in molasses in sensible proportion, and it is 

 the salts that prevent crystallisation of the sugar ; neverthe- 

 less, M. Gayon's researches are of much interest scientific- 

 ally.) 



Till', blood of most slaughter-houses is usually dealt with 

 in a primitive manner in open air, and without previous 

 disinfection. This is obviously opposed to hygienic and 

 economic laws. M. Vautelet has lately brought forward a 

 process of treating all organic detritus from slaughter-houses 

 foi agricultural purposes. He uses sulphate of alumina, 

 sulphuric acid, and nitric acid in fixed proportions. Hy 

 addition of sulphuric acid to sulphate of alumina a bisul- 

 phate is formed, which, less soluble than the Sulphate, 

 quickly causes a complete coagulation of the blood. The 

 rdle of the nitric acid is coagulation of the albumin of the 

 blood and formation of nitrate. The matters are thus dis- 

 infected, and their fertilising power fully preserved, 



Tin. geological changes which the English Channel has 

 undergone are discussed in a recent communication to the 

 French Academy by M. Hebert (June 7). 



